


Adventures in Kaon

by ultharkitty



Category: Transformers - All Media Types, Transformers Generation One
Genre: Gen, Multi, Non-Sticky Sexual Interfacing, Plug and Play Sexual Interfacing, Pre-War
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-01-17
Updated: 2018-01-20
Packaged: 2018-05-14 12:14:04
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 14,558
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5743450
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ultharkitty/pseuds/ultharkitty
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Euphic moves to Kaon seeking adventure, friendship and romance. He finds Vortex.</p><p>Set before the war, when Onslaught ran a (totally legitimate) business empire. Contains consensual non-sticky, some violence, fluff, crack, shenanigans.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

"I moved here for the work," Euphic said. "Kalis is nice and all, but there aren't the jobs in finance right now, there's no room to move up. Kaon's where it's at."

"Where are you living?" Cachet asked. Her optics were glued to her screen, but her antennae were upright to show she was paying attention. Around them, the office was busy enough that their conversation wouldn’t disturb anyone. 

Euphic took a sip of coolant. On his own screen the numbers were dancing, data from fourteen separate departments updating all at once. "I've got an apartment on The Avenue," he said. "Do you know it? There's a big hotel then a block like a mini tower with a bar at the bottom. It's called Green Cascade. I'm five floors up."

"Nice and close," Cachet said. "Is the rent good?"

Euphic bit his lip. "Uh, I bought it." he said quietly. "I saved a while in Kalis, and property here's a lot more reasonable than back home."

Cachet laughed. "Could be a reason for that," she said. When Euphic didn't answer, she popped her head above her screen. "I'm only ribbing you, it's cool you've got your own place. I'm saving for a penthouse, gonna get a sweet pad with rooftop access and a crystal garden and an oil bath I could hide a titan in."

Euphic smiled. "That sounds lov- Oh, um, I'm getting a ping." He tapped his comm unit. "This is Euphic in Finance, how can I help?"

"I think your mail client's screwed," came the reply. "This is Gigabyte from Personnel. I sent you an invite this morning, gotta take you on a walkaround."

"Oh, uh... I haven't received it. I'm downloading a load of data right now, maybe it clogged the..." Euphic coughed and forced himself to start again. "I'm free now, where would you like me?"

* * *

Gigabyte was as large as she was intimidating. Her caterpillar treads rattled as she walked, and her face seemed to be permanently set in an expression of mildly amused exasperation. Euphic got the impression she'd seen it all, and done most of it too. But when she talked, her voice was calm and friendly, and there was a sparkle of kindness in her optics that warmed his core.

"I've raised the mail issue with Systems Control," she said. "Probably a hardware issue. The server room got infested with scraplets a few orns back, the techs are still playing catch up."

"That sounds awful," Euphic said.

Gigabyte shrugged. "Could have been worse. OK, so you remember from your induction I introduced you to the department heads?"

Euphic nodded.

"Well, today we're doing a walkaround so you can meet some of the other staff. Don't worry about missing any work, this is compulsory for all new employees. Onslaught likes people to feel connected."

Euphic nodded again. He'd met Onslaught a total of once, and that was at his interview. The bot had seemed professional, calm, and utterly terrifying. Appropriate considering he was the boss, founder and owner of OnsCorp. It didn't hurt that he was also a decorated veteran of the imperial wars, or that he wore his (clearly functional) cannon proudly. 

"Feel free to ask questions," Gigabyte said, tapping a button on the wall to summon an elevator. "And don't worry if you can't remember everyone's name, that's what the staff directory is for."

"OK," Euphic said. "Thank you." He watched Gigabyte type a code onto the elevator's pad with her large fingers, then swipe her staff pass. The elevator began to move, gathering momentum as it climbed. OnsCorp HQ was large, the biggest office Euphic had ever worked in. It wouldn't have looked small next to the Towers on the outskirts of Iacon, or the business district of Tarn on the edge of the cliff overlooking the Valley. In Kaon, it dominated. Not because the other buildings of the city centre were small, but because it was a good ten percent larger.

Euphic liked it. He liked the rush of the elevator too, the digital display counting up the storeys. He liked the smooth rubber of the flooring beneath his feet, and the clean, warm quality of the building's lights.

They started the tour with Onslaught's personal secretary, a slender war-build with a scarred face and a cygar dangling from the corner of his mouth. Euphic didn't catch his name, and the mech didn't offer a data cable for a polite exchange.

"The boss ain't in," he said. "But Cruise is out on the roof. You wanna show him, Gigs?"

"Sure," Gigabyte said, and the veteran waved a spindly hand, causing a door to open and a great gust of Kaon's sooty air to rush in.

Euphic closed his vents and followed Gigabyte outside. The roof was vast, a helipad sharing space with some kind of landing bay for shuttlecraft, and a crystal garden the likes of which Cachet back in Finance could only dream. And behind the garden rose the glass walls of Onslaught's office, mirror-dark and gleaming in spite of the smog.

"We won't stay out long," Gigabyte said. "Pollution's off the scale today and I already cleaned out my filters once. Hey Cruise!"

"Giga, baby!" A turquoise minibot peered around the corner of one of a dozen squat maintenance vents. His yellow optics gleamed, an echo of the clouds. "Is this our new Assistant Controller of Payroll?"

"That he is," Gigabyte said. "Euphic, this is Cruise, he's in charge of Buildings Maintenance and Repairs for this site."

Euphic walked over and offered his hand. To his relief, Cruise took it and a brief, polite exchange of data ensued.

"It's nice to meet you," Euphic said, tucking his slightly grimy cable back into his wrist. "It's an amazing view from up here."

"It is when the smog clears," Cruise said. "Why don't you take a look around. The boss is out, so you won't be in the way."

Euphic took him at his word, and made a tour of the roof. The smog came and went, great rolling billows of it stinging his optics and clinging to his joints. In the clear moments he glimpsed the smelting pits, the factory district. He looked for The Avenue, and thought he could see the top of his apartment building.

Back inside, they were hit by a wall of fresh air, a troupe of cleaning drones crowding around them. Euphic sighed, waiting as they ran a brush over his frame, focusing on his hands and feet. When they finished he still felt grimy, especially in his joints, but his reflection in the elevator mirror told him he looked acceptable.

After the top floor they went to Medical, then Personnel, then a trip around three separate Research divisions, the purposes of which Euphic was ashamed to admit were lost on him. They bypassed the Finance floor and visited Sales. Compared with the rest it felt like home ground. The floor was the same impact-absorbing rubber as in the elevator, and the desks were arranged in sociable little hubs with noise-cancelling screens that could be erected or removed at a moment's notice. 

Euphic met so many different people his cable began to feel strained, and his vision had a weird glaze when he tried to memorise and put a name to yet another new face.

They were all so smiley, exuberant, aggressive. And welcoming, in the way he was used to being welcomed, being the person who made sure they were all paid correctly and on time.

It was nice to be needed, but Euphic searched each face for a hint of extra warmth, that openness that showed that friendship would not be out of the question.

Their next stop was Logistics. Euphic remembered being introduced to one of the contractors at the beginning of the orn. A shuttleformer, another large imposing bot with an impressive alt mode and a distant air. Not that Euphic had expected any warmth from him. He was alpha caste, they really were in a class of their own.

The Acting Head of Logistics couldn't have been more different. He shook Euphic's hand with both of his, and offered a friendly data exchange while his smile and energy field bordered on frantic. He was hooked up to his console, so couldn't move far beyond his desk, but attempted to explain the vastness of the various loading bays and storage areas anyway.

"It's OK, Firebrand," Gigabyte said. "I'll show Euphic around. I know you're busy."

Firebrand's face fell, but his optics weren't exactly bright and he glanced at one of his bank of floating hardlight screens. "I guess you'll have to," he said, and flopped back into his chair.

"He's a little highly strung," Gigabyte commented when they were out of earshot.

"He seems nice though," Euphic said weakly, following her through a reinforced steel door. He pulled up short, his jaw dropping. "Woah."

"Big, ain't it?" Gigabyte smiled. "This is just one of the loading bays we have here at OnsCorp. Firebrand organises the schedule."

"Does everything come through here?" Euphic asked.

"Oh no, there are warehouses for commodities. This is just for on-site operations."

"No wonder Firebrand was so busy."

Gigabyte gave him a look. "Busy is... generous," she said. "Logistics is expanding, I'm sure we'll be getting some new staff in here soon." She glanced over the rows of crates and the lines of empty bays all numbered and coded, waiting for something to fill them.

Euphic could identify.

* * *

Their next stop was Repairs down in the basement. Cruise's army, Gigabyte called them, an endless parade of engineers and maintenance techs up to their arms in oil and up to their necks in spare parts. Euphic didn't offer his cable; he hoped they understood. They were mostly war-builds, he couldn't help but notice, and tried not to look too nervous.

Thankfully Cruise showed up, freshly buffed by the cleaning drones, and gave him the tour.

"If you ever feel in need of a tune up," he said, "you come here. There's free on-site maintenance for all OnsCorp staff. We’ll look after you."

"Thank you," Euphic said. "I remember seeing that in the employee manual. Is... is there a form to fill in?"

"Nope, just head on down and we'll do the rest."

Euphic nodded his thanks, and followed Gigabyte back to the elevator. His head swam, and his engine gave an embarrassing little grumble.

"Hungry?" Gigabyte said.

"No, I'm fine. Thank you. This place is bigger than I thought."

"Wait up!" A dark hand slid between the closing elevator doors, and Euphic winced, then relaxed as the sensors recognised the obstruction and the hand did not get crushed.

Gigabyte's optics widened slightly. "I didn't think you were in today."

The newcomer shrugged, leaning past her to jab a floor number into the control pad. "Neither did I," he said, and turned his bright red visor on Euphic. "Hi there."

"Vortex, this is Euphic," Gigabyte said, speaking a little more forcefully than Euphic thought was strictly necessary. "He's our new Assistant Controller of Payroll. Euphic, this is Vortex, he works here too."

“I like getting paid.” Vortex said and held out his hand, offering his data cable. Euphic accepted; the exchange was friendly, polite, warm.

Euphic's vocaliser gave a little static cough. "It's nice to meet you," he said. Something moved against the wall, and Euphic could have kicked himself for not noticing the rotors before. "So, um..."

"I'm Onslaught's personal trouble shooter," Vortex said with a smile. He looked Euphic up and down. "You're not planning on being any trouble now, are you?"

Euphic gaped, unable to stop the growing smile. "I... I'm not," he said, and wished he had enough control over his energy field to signal, _unless you want me to be_.

"This is our stop," Gigabyte said, giving Vortex a look Euphic couldn't decipher. But she didn't mention it on their way to meet the Beverages team, and Euphic didn't want to ask.

* * *

The afternoon went quickly, and it wasn't until the end of his shift that Euphic had a spare moment to talk quietly with Cachet.

"I didn't realise there were rotaries working here," he said, looking around to make sure they weren’t overheard.

Cachet shrugged. "Don't you have heliformers in Kalis?" she said. "There's like fifty of them on the staff. Check the directory."

" _Fifty?_ " Euphic shook his head. "The directory hasn't finished loading yet. I... There's mostly ground-based alts in Kalis," he said. "And some shuttles, a few seekers and other fliers. We don't see rotaries very often. At least, I don't."

"A lot of rotaries were built for the wars," Cachet said. "And the boss will always give a veteran a chance."

"Is... I mean, I met a rotary called Vortex earlier. In the elevator." He dropped his voice. "He looks like he might have been a... war-build."

Cachet laughed. "It's not a dirty word," she said. "Yeah, he's a war-build. He never wears his medals though." She peered over the top of her hard-light screen. "You've got that look," she said, her optics narrowing. "I've seen that look."

"What?" Euphic tried to pull the smile off his face. "What look?"

" _That_ look," Cachet said. "He’s gone and hooked you. You‘re too sweet for him, trust me, he’s bad news."

"We... shouldn't talk about our colleagues like that."

"I'm doing you a solid here," Cachet said. "You want some fun, that's fine. He's good at fun. But don't go hoping for anything more."

"I'm really confused," Euphic said. "I don't..."

Cachet shrugged. "I've done what I can," she said, head ducking again beneath the top of the screen.

"I..." Euphic slumped. So Vortex was good at fun? That didn't sound like bad news at all.

* * *

Euphic finished his first orn as OnsCorp’s Assistant Controller of Payroll with a successful implementation of the regular orn-end procedures, and received precisely zero angry emails from colleagues demanding to know why they hadn't been paid or, even worse, why they hadn't been paid enough.

Gigabyte sent him a little congratulations glyph with a playful purple superscript. Cachet slapped him gently on the doorwing on her way out, and his manager - the often-absent and congenitally stoic Brakepad - told him “Well done” with a shadow of a smile. It was more of a smile than Euphic had received from him before, he could take that.

What was harder to take was that Cachet had vanished, and Euphic hadn't had the chance to ask her if she wanted to go get a drink somewhere. He'd been dancing around the question all day, trying to find the right opportunity. He didn't want to come across as desperate, but he also didn't want it to look too casual, like he was only asking her because he'd failed to ask anyone else.

Or to be asked himself.

He shut down his console and locked the keypad. He checked his comm unit just in case someone had messaged him and the thing hadn't beeped, but there was nothing.

He could always go to a bar by himself. People did that. Normal people. He could strike up a conversation, get to know the locals.

Maybe one of them would remember his name.

Maybe Vortex would be there.

He shook his head at himself, and slouched off towards the elevator. The journey down mirrored the sinking of his spirits. He should just go home, get a nice oil bath, watch some TV. It _had_ been a long orn.

Vortex was in the lobby. 

Euphic stepped slowly out of the elevator, ID card in his hand.

"I'm not waiting forever," Vortex was saying into his comm unit. "Brawl... Brawl listen. No we don't have time for you to... Brawl! Coruscate, back me up here!"

Another war build skulked by the security turnstiles. Immense and far more heavily armoured than Vortex, she had an array of brightly coloured kibble slightly more prominent than her collection of integrated weapons. She raised her wrist to her face. "Brawl, it’s been four breems, we are _leaving_. We're gonna start at the Rusty Cog. You can catch us up there, yeah?"

Euphic handed his pass to the Security Guard, who nodded and gave it back. He stepped quietly through the gate and into the public section of the lobby.

"Slag on a stick," Vortex sighed, leaning back against one of the abstract sculptures that lined the foyer. "If I don't get a drink in the next half breem I swear I'm gonna-" He looked up. "Hey there."

"Hello," Euphic said. "I mean hey, hi. Um."

The hulking war-build who Euphic realised belatedly must have been a triple changer pushed away from the security gates. "You must be new," she said, brushing past him with the most aggressive energy field Euphic had ever experienced. "You're the payroll guy, aren't you?"

"Um yes, hello, I'm Euphic," Euphic said, half raising his hand. The war-build took it, and her data exchange was a marked contrast to her energy field.

"Coruscate," she said, letting him go. "I'm Deputy Head of Security. I'm sorry I couldn't be at the meeting for your induction."

"Oh, um, that's OK," Euphic said.

"Right," Coruscate said, seeming to forget all about him. "Tex, are you ready?"

"You like high grade, right?" Vortex said, giving Euphic a grin that went all the way to his laser core.

Coruscate rolled her optics, and began to trudge towards the door.

Euphic smiled. "Sure," he said.

"Good." Vortex pushed himself to his feet and put an arm around Euphic's shoulders. "You'll fit right in."

* * *

Euphic couldn't believe his luck. He was out. In a bar. With colleagues. _Friendly_ colleagues. Sure, they were friendly colleagues who outranked him by several pay grades, but that was fine because Vortex had a tab at the bar and no-one even looked like they were about to suggest that Euphic bought a round.

The Rusty Cog was one of those patched up places. It sat in the foot of an ancient Guardian, a decommissioned hulk which had gradually been absorbed by the city. It was cleanish, and dry, and the energon was pretty good. Euphic didn't even try to erase the smile from his face. Even the cocktails were palatable.

Brawl arrived a few breems after them, a heavyset tank with a bright, exuberant energy field. He muscled in between Vortex and Coruscate, and took his battle mask off revealing a cheerful expression. Another veteran, he had a little dull patch on his chest where Euphic could imagine his medals sitting. He didn't seem bothered that Euphic had joined their group, and seemed content to shuffle over when others started to arrive.

Euphic got happier and happier. He kept his seat next to Vortex - he was damned if he was giving that up - and grinned as the rotary introduced him to each new arrival. Not that he could remember their names for more than five astroseconds. But he committed their faces to long term storage, and tried at the very least to tag each new memory with their favoured type of energon.

In time they hauled over another table, then another. A game of dice broke out, gambling for high grade. A trio of locals, rough-looking and scorched, barged their way in and were welcomed with open arms. Coruscate snuck off to a corner with a tall tetra jet, a hand on her wing, and Euphic caught the occasional glimpse of them, talking close, their foreheads nearly touching.

He smiled at the moment, and accepted yet another free drink. 

The overcharge thrilled him. Vortex kept rippling his energy field, or at the least his energy field kept rippling, and Euphic leaned into it. He had visions of an exchange of connectors under the table, their cables hanging down where no-one else could see them.

It was the drink, he knew. High grade always revved his engine. He risked a move while Brawl was off signalling their order to the bartender over the crowd - brushing his knuckles against those of the rotary, their hands side by side on the table.

When Vortex reciprocated, Euphic nearly fell off his stool.

"Come home with me," Vortex whispered. Or it felt as though he whispered. The bar was so loud he was probably shouting. Weren't they meant to be moving on, taking in the sights and sounds of Kaon through the medium of drinking at as many bars as possible? But Coruscate didn't look like she was moving, and Brawl had begun a drinking game with three of Euphic's newest local friends.

"Maybe," Euphic replied, sidling closer. He leaned up to place his lips as close as he could to Vortex's audio receptors. "That depends what you’ve got planned for me."

"You'll find out," Vortex whispered back, and pressed his palm to Euphic's rapidly heating interface cover.

* * *

After the heat and noise of the bar, outside was a shock. Not quiet, exactly - Kaon was never quiet - but the thrumming, clattering roar of the city was muted, its lights dimmed to mimic natural night. 

Euphic swayed, and Vortex grabbed him. “Not that way,” he said, steering Euphic out of the road. “This way.” When he laughed his rotors clattered, and Euphic couldn’t help but giggle too. Then he sneezed, the bitty air tickling his filters. 

“Where d’you live?” he slurred.

“Not far,” Vortex replied, giving one of Euphic’s shoulder tires a squeeze. Euphic murmured and put an arm around Vortex’s waist, partly to support himself and partly in the hope Vortex would do that again. 

Night in Kaon wasn’t like in Kalis. There was litter, for a start, trash blown in great stinking drifts against buildings, slung in huge piles in corners. There was oil underfoot and grit in the air, and noises Euphic wasn’t used to. He let Vortex guide him, looking around at each new street, taking in broken lights and pools of darkness. The occasional vagrant crouched in the lee of a doorway, and Euphic was sure he spotted a couple clanging in an alley. 

“You said not far?” he commented, flaring his energy field to make sure Vortex knew he wasn’t annoyed. 

“We’re not exactly goin’ in a straight line,” Vortex said, swerving to avoid a puddle. Euphic missed his footing, and Vortex lifted him. “Think of it as the scenic route.”

Euphic clung without thinking, engine purring when Vortex pulled him close and didn’t set him back on the ground. “I could get used to this,” he muttered, leaning his head on Vortex’s shoulder. 

“Hey, don’t go falling asleep on me,” Vortex said. “I got plans for you.” He paused. “Frag.”

“Frag?” Euphic perked up. That wasn’t the tone he’d been hoping to hear. The ground settled very quickly under his feet, and Vortex leant him against a grubby slick wall. 

“Stay there,” the rotary said, his visor a streak of red light. Euphic blinked and shook his head, and only then did he notice the interloper. It was a shadow, tall and lanky with long arms and a blaze of orange at the approximate level of eyes. Vortex was squaring up to it, his systems whining softly as his integrated weapons booted. 

Euphic hadn’t noticed the weapons before. And where had Vortex found a light stick? Only it wasn’t a light stick, he realised. It was some kind of laser knife. 

“Vortex,” the shadow rumbled, advancing on its weird split feet. “Searchlight says, your time is up.” 

When it leapt, Euphic winced. He fumbled with his comms, trying to flip the cover up and dial. Vortex took a smack to the face that would have landed Euphic in hospital, but came up grinning, that knife of his a bright arc in the air. 

Euphic couldn’t look, but he couldn’t look away either. He prepped the number for the emergency services, fingers hovering shakily over his comm unit. The fight was a blur, leaving trails of bright colour in the gloom: their visors, the knife, an arc of glittering liquid that held Euphic spellbound. 

The drone fell to its knees. It had to be a drone. It wasn’t a person, could never have been a person to creep up on someone and attack them like that, to lash out wildly with such gaping wounds at the backs of its legs, its energon spurting in little gouts from a dozen injuries. To go through all that and not cry out, not yell, not scream; Euphic couldn’t fathom it. 

He shook his head, driving the clouds from his optics. Vortex writhed with the thing, grappling on the filthy floor. Euphic scrabbled at his comms, but Vortex was on top, was punching the thing again and again in the face, and it was yielding, it was falling. 

Vortex leaned up, raising his arm, his fingers transforming into claws. Then he struck, plunging his fist through the drone’s shallow chest and ripping out its core. 

Euphic vented so hard he choked, his legs reduced to rubber. Dizzy he slumped, the rough wall scraping the gloss from his finish. 

“You OK there?” Vortex said. 

Euphic held up his hand, waiting for his vents to clear. Then he blinked. “Me? Am _I_ OK? Is it dead? Are _you_ OK?” He took Vortex’s hand; the claws were long and sharp and wet against his fingers. “You’re hurt!” 

Vortex glanced down at his arm and shrugged. “It’s nothing. And yeah, he’s dead.”

“You’re bleeding! You’re bleeding everywhere! Should I call the police? What do we do about that?” Euphic realised he was shaking. 

“It’s not all mine,” Vortex said, slipping an arm around Euphic’s waist. His energy field was hot, crackling. Euphic’s engine purred as the panic morphed, and his core melted as Vortex drew him into an urgent kiss. 

“Oh frag, I want you,” Euphic breathed. “Take me home and hack me. Hack me hard.”

Vortex grinned. “Dirty little thing, aren’t you?”

Euphic twined his fingers with Vortex’s claws, a shudder running through him. “You have no idea.”

* * * 

Euphic stirred from recharge, warm and cosy and in need of a good long stretch. He rolled onto his belly, pulling air through his vents in a wide, deep yawn. His hangover was a mild throb nudging at the edges of his head. It was nothing compared with the ache in his interface hardware. 

A good ache, he decided. A well-used ache. 

A clean ache too, and hadn’t that shower been wonderful after the grime of Kaon’s streets, the shock of the attack from that drone. The shower, and the hot, hard and ridiculously filthy frag they’d enjoyed in the corridor outside Vortex’s apartment before they’d even managed to get inside. Then a slower session in the shower, as the warm spray shut off and the dryers gusted. Euphic remembered the sofa, more high grade, a game with shots and kisses and jolts of connected pleasure. Then a night he could only describe as a feast for all the senses.

He shivered and stretched, pointing his toes, and shifted one way and then the other to ease the stiffness from his joints. His cables were out, sprawled in a vulgar tangle on the bed; his finish was ruined. He smiled. 

“Do that wriggling thing again,” Vortex said. He was lying on his back, his rotors pressed into the foam - and Euphic realised with a jolt that he was lying on one of them, must have been lying on it most of the night. A hard-light screen hovered a little way from Vortex’s face, some kind of movie playing; he’d probably diverted the audio to a personal feed. 

Euphic stretched again, pushing his arms high above his head, and cocking his hip. “Good afternoon,” he said. “What are you watching?”

“Nothing much,” Vortex said, and the screen vanished. He propped himself up on his elbows, his trapped rotor bending. “Frag, you’re pretty. I could just eat you up.”

Euphic grinned, and shuffled closer. Then he winced as his cables tugged. “I… might need some assistance.”

How Vortex managed to roll on top of him without breaking that rotor blade, Euphic had no idea, and he wasn’t about to ask. He smiled up into Vortex’s optics - so clear through his visor - and felt the charge grow as the rotary gently untied the knot. 

There was no question of packing his equipment away. Euphic arched in invitation, the first surge of the interface cutting right through the ache and lighting him up from the inside. 

The interface was slow, intense. It dulled his hangover, and made his sensors sing. He played with Vortex’s fingers, watching them transform to claws and back, encouraging him to do it again, to take those claws and trace the lines of his own scratched bodywork, the few remaining islands of rich red shine. The previous night was like a dream; the fight with the drone, the quick giddy flight to Vortex’s apartment.

An edge of unease crept into Euphic’s thoughts, and he fought and failed to keep it from the interface. 

In response Vortex kissed him, sending a surge along the interface so powerful Euphic teetered on the brink of a sudden climax. He clung on, trying to lose himself in the embrace and the charge. 

For a while it worked, and he gave as good as he got, manipulating the feedback loop, showing Vortex exactly what he liked and how he liked it. Vortex pressed him down, his energy field all-consuming, the weight and power of him a thrill that tripped Euphic into a slow and lazy overload.

But when the afterglow faded and the connection was severed, the unease snuck back. 

Vortex sprawled on his front, an arm over Euphic’s waist, his fans whirring and his rotor blades turning slowly. The breeze was a faint wash over Euphic’s sensor net, and he tried to relax. 

“Something’s getting to you,” Vortex muttered. “You’re jittery.” He stroked the lighter plating at Euphic’s waist, his energy field a mild pleasant tingle. Euphic huffed and tilted his head so he could see Vortex’s face. 

“Last night,” he said. “I… That… drone. Shouldn’t we call the authorities?”

Vortex smirked and pulled Euphic closer. “Don’t you worry about that,” he said. 

“Not worry? But someone sent that to attack you. It knew your name.”

“And he’s dead now,” Vortex said. “It’s fine.”

He, not it. Euphic swallowed. “Fine? We left it in the street!”

Vortex laughed and patted Euphic’s aft. “You worry too much,” he said, and stole any opportunity to respond with a kiss. Euphic squirmed, a tingle worming through his over-used equipment. “That’s better,” Vortex commented, and Euphic tugged him closer. 

It went on a long while, deep and indulgent, and Euphic thrust himself into it, as much to avoid thinking about the night before as for the pure and simple enjoyment. 

“You’re still worrying,” Vortex said, clearly amused. 

“But you’re not,” Euphic responded. “I… I’m sorry, this kind of thing’s never happened around me before. I… You clearly know what you’re doing.”

“I do,” Vortex said. “There’s no-one gonna talk about it, and the cops won’t ever know it happened.”

“But… the body.”

“I called a friend, he dealt with it.”

Euphic blinked. “You, uh, you’re used to dealing with scrap like this,” he said weakly. 

Vortex smirked. “I’m the troubleshooter, remember?” 

Euphic made himself smile. “So you say.” He wound his fingers around Vortex’s, imagining the blunt digits transforming. “Do you have time for one more...”

Vortex pressed down. “For you, I’ve got all day.”


	2. Chapter 2

“Morning, shiny,” Cachet said as Euphic bounced into their office. She was leaning against the coolant dispenser, waiting for the flow to fill her glass. 

He tried not to let his grin get too big. “Good morning! Did you get detailed? I like the gold on your antennae.”

Cachet laughed. “Me? Did _I_ get detailed? Looked in a mirror lately?” She flicked the tap before her glass could overflow, and gave him an appraising look. “You got laid.”

Euphic almost choked. “You can’t say things like that!”

“I hope you were careful.”

“I… have enhanced firewalls,” Euphic said. “I get the regular upgrades.”

“That’s not what I meant.” Cachet sipped the excess from her glass and shoved a heap of datasheets over to make space for it on her desk. “Did he take you to Bliss? Femme with the six arms?”

Euphic grabbed himself a beaker and leaned against the dispenser. “I went to the Auto-Hub,” he said. “Six arms?”

Cachet swung into her seat. “He took you home though? We both know who I mean.”

“We… went to a bar,” Euphic said. “And then back to his, yes.” He sat, dropping down behind his screen so the smile that split his face wouldn’t be so obvious. 

“Twelve,” Cachet said. 

“What do you mean ‘twelve’?”

Cachet waved her stylus above the top of her screen. “I keep a tally - number of people who don’t listen to me about Vortex. You make twelve.”

“I listened to you!” Euphic logged into his workstation, wishing the screens were hard-light so he could see Cachet’s expression. “ _Twelve?_ ”

“He gets around,” Cachet said. “I told you, he’s bad news.”

“You told me he was good for some fun,” Euphic said. “I distinctly remember it, you said he was good at fun.”

Cachet took a noisy glug of her coolant. “That wasn’t an endorsement!” 

“Twelve,” Euphic said weakly. 

Cachet sighed. “Look, you’re a good guy, OK? I wouldn’t be talking to you about this if you were some stuck up gearshift.” She peered around the side of her monitor. “Here’s some advice: don’t rely on him, don’t expect anything from him, don’t trust him. You’re sweet, and you know how to do your job, I don’t want to see you get hurt.”

“I’m not going to,” Euphic said. “I… I take it he’s got a track record?”

Cachet’s head vanished behind her monitor, but her laughter was loud and went on for a long time. 

“That… wasn’t meant to be funny.”

“Oh sweetie,” Cachet said, her vents wheezing as she got the laughter under control. “You need to talk to Kalend.”

* * *

Euphic found Kalend at lunch. Tall and lanky, her alt mode wasn’t obvious from her root form, but it seemed to be some kind of jet. She was sitting with her feet up in the Maintenance mess room, a mug of something hot and bitter-smelling in her hands. 

Euphic knocked even though the door was open. “Hi? You’re Kalend, right?”

“Make yourself at home,” Kalend replied, stretching one elegant leg to kick a chair in his direction. “Cachet tells me you want some intel.”

“That… makes it sound a bit underhand,” Euphic said. He thought about offering his cable, but Kalend’s hands were already busy. “I’m sure she told you…”

“Shut the door,” Kalend said. “Cachet told me you’re her number twelve.” She looked him up and down. “Yeah, I can see it.”

Euphic blinked.

Kalend quirked a smile, and sipped her hot whatever-it-was. “Have you thought about tanks?” she asked, licking her drink from her lips.

Euphic frowned, finally sitting down. “Tanks?”

“Tanks are solid,” Kalend said. “Tanks are reliable.”

“What’s this got to do with-”

“Tanks won’t go killing a guy in front of someone they just met,” Kalend said. “Not if they can help it.”

Euphic stared. 

“Vortex is dangerous,” Kalend stated. “Cachet doesn’t know the half of it, and we’re gonna keep it that way. I’m only telling you this because Tex has no sense of timing around hot little racers. He could have taken the fight elsewhere. Frag, he could have just flown you both outta there and called us to take care of it. But he didn’t.”

Euphic coughed. “How do you know-”

“Because I’ve seen it before,” Kalend said. “I’m with the clean-up team.” Her optics narrowed, their light a thin orange beam. “Business in Kaon, it’s not all stocks and shares and biting conversation at board room functions, y’know? It’s dirty. And frag, you’ve been here an orn and Vortex already has you neck deep in it.”

“It wasn’t his fault,” Euphic said. “The.. He was attacked.”

Kalend shook her head. “He was showing off,” she said. “Trust me, whatever cog-headed empty got sent to scrap Tex was not a threat.”

Euphic hung his head. “It looked like a threat to me.”

“I know,” Kalend said, and she didn’t sound unsympathetic. “But you’re new, and you’re from Kalis for frag sake.” She set down her mug. “What do you carry?”

“Excuse me?”

“What do you carry? Your weapons, what are they?”

Euphic gaped. “I… I don’t have a weapon.”

Kalend stared at him. “You don’t have a weapon,” she said flatly. 

“I don’t see that I need one,” Euphic responded. 

“You moved to Kaon and you don’t have a weapon.” 

Euphic shrugged. 

Kalend sighed. “All us rough old veterans won’t always be around to protect you, you know?”

“I… thought Kaon’s reputation was a bit harsh,” Euphic said. “I’ve not had any problems so far. I mean, except the… person who attacked Vortex.”

Kalend leaned back, folding her long, slender fingers behind her head. “I’m going to make a call for you,” she said. “Have you met Brawl?”

Euphic nodded. “He was at the bar the other night. He seems nice.”

Kalend pursed her lips, half smiling. “He’s solid,” she said. “He’ll get you kitted out, show you how to shoot.” Her optics dimmed a moment, and she grinned. “Are you free tonight?” 

Euphic nodded, too stunned to find words. 

There was another pause, and then Kalend laughed. “All right, you’re meeting Brawl at the shooting range on Floor Fifty as soon as your shift’s over. The code for the elevator is five five two nine. It’s not general access, so you won’t be able to get it to stop there without that code. Brawl’s gonna sort your clearance.”

“Shooting range?” Euphic had the sudden feeling this was some kind of long-burning practical joke. “That wasn’t in the employee handbook.”

“It wouldn’t be,” Kalend said. She picked up her mug again and stirred the contents with a five-jointed finger. “Go get some fuel,” she said, “you’re gonna need it.”

* * *

Back at his desk, Euphic watched Cachet’s antennae bounce above her screen and tried to clear his mind. It wasn’t a joke, it couldn’t be. Vortex had been attacked, the drone - the empty, whatever it was - had been real and Vortex had killed it. But the building couldn’t have a shooting range, could it?

He thought of the lockers near the Security gates in the lobby. Weapons weren’t allowed in HQ, everyone had to drop theirs off on entry, even the war-builds. The only people except Onslaught who who went around armed were Coruscate and her team, and only because they _were_ Security. 

Even Vortex didn’t wear his weapons in the building. 

Euphic sighed and went back to his inbox. People had questions, needed information, wanted his time, attention, advice. He drafted each response, then went back in before sending to adjust accents and change glyphs, adding an element of informality and friendliness. There were enough dour people in his sector, he didn’t want to add to their number. 

When seventeen hundred joors rolled around, he was calmer, until he got in the lift. Cachet had already left, stretching out of her chair and bouncing off to wherever it was she went after work. Euphic could have done with her there, he should have mentioned the appointment with Brawl. But Kalend had told him not to share too much, and he wasn’t yet sure what too much _was_. 

Unless this was all just a practical joke, a little bit of hazing for the new guy. A splash of energon came to mind, a scorched and bitter smell; he shivered. 

Tilting up his chin and straightening his doorwings, Euphic typed in the code Kalend had given him. As his fingers pressed the keypad he thought it wouldn’t be so bad if nothing happened, if the keypad flashed red for incorrect code and he could go home instead. But the elevator moved, and his fuel tank dropped. He caught his own gaze in the reflection on the polished walls, and straightened. He needed to trust people, and if people turned out to be hazing him, he needed to laugh along and be a good sport about it. 

He smiled hopefully as the doors finally opened… onto no-one. He slumped, and stepped out into the small lobby. The floor was clean, but scratched, no sound-absorbing rubber mats here. Two doors sat in the opposite wall, large and sturdy-looking, and a glass-walled booth stood unoccupied to his right. His comm flashed. 

He clicked to answer. “Euphic here.” 

“Where are you? Are you there? I’m runnin’ late.”

Euphic blinked. “Brawl?”

“You’re there right?” Brawl said. Or at least, the voice was coming from Brawl’s comm frequency; he sounded different when he wasn’t in a crowded bar. 

“I’m in the lobby at Floor Fifty,” Euphic said. “Like Kalend told me.”

“OK, cool, sit tight, I gotta do a thing and I’ll be out.”

The elevator doors closed and the cab moved off. Euphic shuffled his feet; the hall was featureless, but the glass-walled booth had a notification screen attached. He stepped in front of it, and the screen booted in response. He flicked through the posters, mostly security notices reminding people to be vigilant around visitors and to beware unverified software patches, but there were a few motivational sheets, even an advert from one of the lobby Security Guards selling an unwanted engine mod. 

Euphic read enough to realise it was for a jet engine, and flicked on. When a door opened, he jumped. 

“Hey!” Brawl strode out, a wide grin on his face. His cannon barrel gleamed, and Euphic realised with a jolt that he was another exception to the ‘no weapons in HQ’ rule.

“Hi,” Euphic said, trying to match the grin as Brawl advanced on him. 

“Tex wanted to be here,” Brawl said. “But he kinda can’t. He’s gettin’ chewed out by the boss over that thing with that guy what you saw.” He shrugged. “I didn’t tell you that. OK, you ready?”

Euphic nodded, and Brawl clapped him on the shoulder. 

“Awesome! All right, first thing, I gotta give you an induction.” Brawl looked around, gesturing as he spoke. “Emergency exits got them glowing sign things on. There’s two at the back, one for fliers only ‘cause, like, it’s into the air. Don’t use that. Unless you got a jetpack hidden somewhere I can’t see. No jetpack? OK. Main exit’s this one. The boss knows you’re here so that’s cool.” Brawl paused, his lips moving as he counted things off his fingers. “Oh, and if you get too warm or something you gotta tell me. The aircon’s glitching, fraggin’ scraplets. We got coolant though.”

Euphic nodded. “I think I’ve got all that,” he said. 

“I got it written down somewhere too,” Brawl said. “Fragged if I know where. OK, come this way!”

Brawl stepped up to the door, and Euphic’s optics widened as a nozzle emerged from the top of the frame and scanned him from head to foot. It scanned Euphic too, and he bit his lip against the tingle. 

The door opened onto a long corridor. Each door was labelled in code with a string of glyphs Euphic didn’t have time to read. He followed Brawl to a door that was more like a cage. Brawl hit a buzzer, and a squat airframe scooted into view on a wheeled chair. 

“Is this the racer?” she said, giving Euphic a wink. “What will you be having, Brawl?”

“Pistols,” Brawl said, “gauge four to five point two, small to medium handgrip. Gimme ten rounds each, and I’ll take, uh, four EMP flashes, and a las-pistol. I’ll take a spare charging cartridge too.”

“Coming right up.”

The flier wasn’t quite so squat once she’d got off her chair. She vanished into a maze of racks, and came back every so often with an assortment of guns and odd little pellets that must have been the EMP flashes. 

Finally, she seemed to be finished. “How long will they be out?” she asked. 

“A while,” Brawl said. “Whatever doesn’t come back is going off site.” He gave a sideways nod to Euphic, and stage whispered, “He’s not armed.”

Her optics widened. “Wow. OK, sign here, you know the drill.” She pushed a datasheet through an opening in the cage-like wall. “You too,” she said to Euphic. “Sign here and here. You’re covered by company insurance while you’re on this floor, but you’ll need your own insurance everywhere else, OK?”

Euphic nodded, signing where indicated. “Thank you.”

“All right then,” she said, taking back the forms and giving them a quick look over. “You boys have fun.”

Euphic didn’t know how Brawl managed to carry so many guns at once. He clipped them to his arms and thighs, slung the ammo over his broad shoulders, and slotted the spare charging clip into his crotch. When he moved, it was a wonder he didn’t rattle. 

The shooting range was a surprise, Euphic still couldn’t believe it was actually real. It seemed to stretch the full length of Floor Fifty, one dizzying stretch of corridor with various styles of target. A pair of war-builds were chatting at the opposite end, and Brawl hollared at them. They waved back, one of them hefting a gun easily as big as Euphic himself. 

“We’ll take this one,” Brawl said, stopping in front of a kind of alley or lane or whatever it was called. Euphic had seen them before on a dozen different cop shows, and had always wanted to have a go. Brawl typed something into the console on the side wall, and a hologram sprang to life about halfway down the aisle. “Let me see your hands,” Brawl said. “Hmm, OK…” He unclipped one of the pistols, and sized up the handle with Euphic’s outstretched palm. “You ever shoot one of these before?”

Euphic shook his head. “I’ve never shot anything before,” he said. “There was never the call for it back in Kalis.”

“Huh.” Brawl shrugged, and wrapped Euphic’s fingers around the grip. “I went to Kalis once,” he said. “Before the air got all clean. OK, we’re gonna start with this one. You hold this bit and you aim this other bit. And you press this bit to make it open when you wanna put in the ammo, OK?”

Euphic nodded, and Brawl watched as he operated the switch a few times. 

“All right. This one fires bullets, armour-piercing. You slot ‘em in like this, but make sure the little arrows line up or nothing’s gonna happen.”

Euphic nodded again and tried to remember. Thankfully Brawl made him remove and re-insert the cartridge at least fifteen times, until his hands stopped shaking and he could do it without thinking each step through. 

“You’re getting the hang of it!” Brawl boomed, and Euphic nearly dropped the gun.

The actual shooting wasn’t nearly as bad as he imagined. Of course he was terrible, and of course he missed the target with depressing consistency. But with Brawl’s hands-on assistance, he got the stance right, and the recoil didn’t hurt like he’d imagined it would. 

He emptied the clip at the bright, vaguely person-shaped hologram in the middle of the lane. 

“You hit it!” Brawl yelled, clapping him on the shoulder. “Right in the leg! OK, let’s try you with the next size up.”

Euphic did as he was instructed, a smile edging its way onto his face. Brawl got close, moving his arm, his hand, adjusting his aim. His energy field was a pleasant buzz, a happy, calming warmth. Sure, there was an edge of aggression to his cheerfulness, but Euphic put that down to his personality and not some innate part of his war-build programming.

“Fire at will,” Brawl said, and Euphic steadied himself, took a deep vent, and almost hit the target. “Keep going!”

After a while, Brawl called a break. He showed Euphic where they kept the coolant, grinning as he grabbed them both a can. 

“You’re doing good,” he said, sitting heavily on the bench by the dispenser. “You ain’t a natural, but you’re not gonna be. You keep training, you’ll get better.”

“How often?” Euphic asked. He pulled the ring on his can, and sat beside the tank. 

“Maybe once an orn,” Brawl said. “More if you want. I’ll get you clearance.”

Euphic smiled. 

* * *

On the way home Euphic’s arms began to ache. He decided to walk, the las-pistol Brawl had chosen for him nestled against his hip, a strange but not unwelcome pressure. He swung his arms, feeling the areas of tension, letting the ache build and ease. His thoughts floated, fantasies of heroism with his new weapon, thoughts of Vortex and Brawl, of Cachet and what she might say if she noticed he now needed a locker behind the security desk in the lobby. 

He needed insurance too. OnsCorp’s insurance only covered him for the shooting range. 

Euphic stopped dead in the middle of the sidewalk. 

He didn’t have any insurance. What was he thinking? He hardly heard the curses of the guy who had been walking behind him, a string of profanity the likes of which he never would have encountered in Kalis. He nudged his way to the nearest building and leaned against the wall, pinging the city’s public data net. He couldn’t walk around uninsured; anything could happen! He tapped his foot as he waited for the portal to connect. Anything could already have happened. Anything could still happen. The gun could go off, it could malfunction, it could kill someone, and he’d be liable. He’d just bought an apartment, he couldn’t afford reparations. 

As his innards gurgled and the stream of people muscled by, Euphic finally connected to the public data net, and submitted his search terms. 

“Spare some fuel?” a voice came at him, and Euphic held up his hand. 

“Just a sec,” he said. “I’m sorry, trying to… hang on.”

A dark red blob rose in his visual field, partly obscured by the data net portal. “What you doing there, bit? You got any fuel or not?”

Euphic took a step to the right, scrolling through his options. There were too many, no way of telling which one would work for him without reading their terms and conditions in full. 

“Coolant then?” the voice asked. “I could really use some coolant.”

Biting his lip, Euphic began a new search for interim weapons insurance. He just needed something to cover him until he got home and could arrange something longer term. It didn’t have to be great, it didn’t even have to be cheap. Why couldn’t he have asked Brawl before they left the building?

“Hey!” Another voice cut through Euphic’s focus, and he tried to block it out. “Get the frag outta my doorway, leave the grounder alone. Go on, get!”

“Where am I meant to go?” the red blur snapped. “You wanna answer me that?”

“You can go to Dead End for all I care, I don’t give a frag.”

Euphic shook his head to clear it, and bought the mid-price option for one day coverage. He could only hope it was right. He coughed. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I was trying to concentrate, what can I do for you?”

“Do for you?” A chrome minibot was looking at him, optic ridges meeting over his angular nose. A rust-coloured individual of uncertain frametype was hopping between his feet a few steps away. The minibot glared. “You don’t _do_ for him, he’s an empty. What are you, a tourist?”

“I’m…” _New?_ Euphic thought. “Not a tourist,” he said. 

“Then you’re tapped.” The minibot rolled his optics and turned on his heel. 

“ _Do_ you got any fuel?” the rust-coloured individual asked. “Only I’m runnin’ on fumes here and all my nanites died.”

“Died?” Euphic stared. “How did your nanites die? Oh Sigma.” Free from the rigours of insurance selection, Euphic’s processor caught up with his optical input. The individual wasn’t rust-coloured, he _was_ rust. Head to toe rust, the worst case of infection Euphic had seen outside of a disaster movie. 

When he opened his mouth to speak, a little cloud of dust came out. “Nanites gotta feed too.”

“Oh scrap, um...” Euphic searched his compartments. “Look, I don’t have any fuel, but I… There’s a coolant bar on the corner there, I can get you something.” He offered a smile, afraid for a moment that the… person might try to touch his arm, but he didn’t. He nodded, and Euphic shot off for the bar. 

Rusty followed him to the door, little flakes falling behind him as he walked. 

Euphic swallowed, and stepped through the door, then realised that Rusty hadn’t joined him, and went back outside again. 

“I can’t go in there,” he said. “No vagrants, says on the door.”

“It’s… I’m sorry,” Euphic said. “I should have thought. What would you like?”

He emerged a quarter breem later with a few cans of coolant, a couple of cubes of standard groundframe energon, and a packet of chews. Rusty’s face lit up - partially - and for a moment Euphic thought the warm glow of having helped someone in need might buoy him up through the night. But the glow faded almost as soon as it had come.

“Is there anywhere you can go to get new nanites?” he said. 

“Nothing I can afford,” Rusty said, ripping the lid off a cube and tipping it straight down his throat. “You really are a tourist, aren’t you?”

“No… No, but I did just move here.”

“Figures,” Rusty said. “Where’d you come from, Crystal City? Iahex?”

“Kalis,” Euphic said. “I moved here for work.”

Rusty laughed, a dry wheezing which echoed with the squeak of his neck joints. “Work, that’s nice. Me, I’ve been here a long time. Long, long time.” He paused long enough to drink the second cube of energon, and fix a grubby looking straw into a can of coolant. “I need a new frame,” he said, opening a port on his shoulder and jabbing the other end of the straw straight int it. “Nanites aren’t enough.”

“I’m sorry,” Euphic said. “If I could afford-”

“I ain’t asking you to,” Rusty cut him off. “You’re a good bot, I hope you got yourself a good long term job with all the benefits.”

Euphic nodded. “OnsCorp,” he said. “I’m-”

Rusty nearly choked. “Maybe you’re not the bot I took you for.” He hefted the bag Euphic had given him. “Thanks for the top up,” he said, and took a painful-looking step away. 

Euphic watched him go. He should have asked him his name, should have offered to put him up for the night. No, that was stupid. But he could have called someone, found somewhere for Rusty to stay. He could afford to lose thirty creds to a cheap hotel room, another ten for a good long soak in an oil bath. Maybe after that a nanite infusion might take hold. Maybe. 

He gasped as someone grabbed him from behind, and thought about reaching for his gun a good second too late. But the arm around his waist was grey, and the energy field flaring against his back was wonderfully familiar. 

“I’ve been looking everywhere for you,” Vortex said, his voice going straight to Euphic’s interface hardware. 

“I hope the boss wasn’t too hard on you,” Euphic said, and winced. “I wasn’t meant to know about that.” When Vortex only laughed, Euphic turned in his arms, looking up into his visor. “Don’t tell Brawl I said, please?”

“What’s it worth?” Vortex asked, rolling his shoulders as the crowds of Kaon refused to give his rotors space. 

Euphic pursed his lips. “I’m sure you’ll think of something.”

* * *

They ended up at a bar, even though it was a weekday. Vortex didn’t seem to care, and Euphic tried his best to copy his attitude. It was a nice bar, on the top floor of a multi-storey repairs shop, with coloured glass for the ceiling and walls, and tables made out of a mosaic of different coloured metals. 

The way they approached the bar, through the shop itself and up a tiny elevator at the back, Euphic got the impression it was members only. There was even a bouncer on the door, and she definitely exchanged some kind of wireless greeting with Vortex as they headed in. 

It made Euphic feel special. He needed it, after his rollercoaster of a day. Thank goodness Brawl had sorted his civilian weapons permit, or he’d have forgotten that as well. 

“What are you having?” Vortex said, a hand on his doorwing, steering him to the bar.

Euphic glowed. “I can think of something,” he said softly, enjoying the ripple in Vortex’s energy field. “Surprise me?”

Vortex grinned. “I think I can manage that.”

He could, and he did, and Euphic was on his third multi-layered and deceptively potent cocktail before he remembered his insurance. He paused in sipping, the straw gripped between his lips, and pulled up the terms and conditions on his HUD. “This should maybe be my last,” he said, and giggled as Vortex tickled the cover of his wrist port.

“Not thinking of bailing on me?” he said, smiling as Euphic angled his toe to make his energy field tingle over the landing gear on Vortex’s heel. 

“Weapons insurance doesn’t cover me if I’m drunk,” he replied, loving the feel of the pistol against his hip, the way Vortex leaned in close. He had a presence to him; like Kalend said, he was dangerous, and hot scrap it made Euphic buzz.

“Who cares?” Vortex said, dipping a claw into Euphic’s drink. He stirred it around before licking it clean, and Euphic near enough melted. When their lips met, Vortex was as warm as Euphic felt, and it was a miracle he didn’t end up in the rotary’s lap there and then. 

He wanted to, he really wanted to, but they were in public, and it wasn’t like they were in a secluded corner booth. People could see them, people were looking at them, and although this in itself was pretty damn exciting Euphic managed to exercise what little restraint he had, and broke the kiss after several aeons. 

“Take me home?” he suggested, and they made it as far as the elevator. 

Euphic had never ‘faced anywhere so public, so daring. When the doors opened at the ground floor, he had his legs around Vortex’s waist, his back against the wall, the first shock of charge already rocketing through him. He dimmed his optics as the doors opened, and it was a miracle there was no-one there. But there could have been, and they’d have seen him, the respectable grounder from Kalis, pinned to the wall by a rotary easily half again his size, squirming in abject ecstasy. 

How they got back to Vortex’s place, Euphic had no idea. Flying was involved, but it was dizzy and uncoordinated, and they were definitely still connected, which he was pretty sure wasn’t entirely legal. But it barely took a moment, and then he was falling, his doorwings sinking into Vortex’s recharge pad, his hands grasping for the nearest rotors, his lips again consumed. 

He could have stayed there all night, all quartex, all vorn. He laughed, spinning as Vortex fed him sensations of flight, panting as the charge skyrocketed along with the temp. He wore off his overcharge in energetic bursts of intense pleasure, and squirmed as Vortex fed him sips of sickly-sweet high grade so strong it made him see stars. 

He had a notion of going home. At some point. Never now, perish the thought, but at some point before the night grew too long, while he could still rest and wake up refreshed the following day. He needed to mind his paint, he wouldn’t have time for a full detailing before work. But each time the practicalities came to mind, Vortex did something that made his head spin and his interface hardware glow, and he was lost. 

He was glad. Going home was a virtuous urge, and he didn’t want to be virtuous. He wanted to be naughty, to flirt with danger, to make Vortex light up in surprise at his whispered suggestions. To feel the thrill of uncertainty, the glorious loss of control as Vortex did exactly what he hoped. 

Being pinned was heavenly. Held tight, his wrists in a cage of claws, his chest open and his laser core thrumming as Vortex managed to find with his tongue the one small part that, when stimulated just right, would make him overload without end. 

At least, that was how it felt, and Euphic knew at least part of it was the connection, and part was the overcharge, and part was the tiredness seeping into everything. But scrap, he was having fun, and the inappropriate contact warnings flashing on his HUD were that extra bit of spice that made everything that much better. 

“You really are a kinky little thing,” Vortex murmured, his voice echoing through Euphic’s chest, making him laugh. Was he kinky enough? Maybe this is what Cachet had warned him about. Maybe she thought Vortex was too much for him. Vortex revved his engine and flicked his tongue over that one incredibly sensitive spot, and Euphic was in ecstasy. 

He was also utterly and completely exhausted. 

In the afterglow, he lay limp and panting, tiny surges shuddering through his frame, little sparks of pleasure ghosting here and there. Beside him, Vortex had certainly achieved fulfilment, a satiated smile on his face as he shuffled his rotors and flopped over onto his back. 

Euphic wondered if he ought to make a move to go, but Vortex shifted, and Euphic squeaked as he was lifted bodily onto Vortex’s chest. He managed to close his own chassis just in time, and laughed tiredly as Vortex lodged a pillow under his head. He could live with those strong, exciting hands on his back and aft, with that warming, vibrant energy field pressed against him. 

With a happy sigh, Euphic got comfortable.

Outside, a siren split the night, a counterpoint to the constant hum of land and air traffic. Vortex’s visor dimmed; the lowlights in the room went out. Euphic yawned, and must have fallen straight into recharge, because the next thing he knew it was morning and his internal alarm was screaming at him.

Vortex was still there, still holding him, still out cold, and Euphic spent a while just looking at him. In the glow of the daytime streetlights filtering through the long high windows, he could trace the map of scars on Vortex’s grey face. Even healed as they were, back in Kalis they would have been considered ugly. Euphic had known people to have their entire face replaced after one small cut. But Vortex wore his like a medal, and Euphic found that he liked it. It didn’t make him any less enjoyable to kiss, and Euphic shuffled forward to gently brush his lips against the corner of Vortex’s mouth. 

“Morning,” Vortex murmured, and kissed him back, and Euphic melted. 

It should have ended where it had begun, with a slow delightful kiss, but they were still attached, their mess of cables entangled, and Euphic couldn’t help but send a light pulse of tentative enquiry. He hadn’t intended to end up squirming, trapped again in Vortex’s arms, arching and moaning as the charge spiralled and his armour warmed, but he wasn’t about to complain. He kept an eye on the time, or at least he meant to keep an eye on the time. 

He also meant to speak with Vortex, to check if he was OK after the chewing out from Onslaught, to ask how soon he should expect a call from Kaon’s police about making his witness statement. But the morning flew by in a shower of sparks, and in the end Vortex had to fly him to work to make sure he got there in time. 

He had to admit, it was gratifying. The knowing glances, the way Vortex kept a proprietary hand on the small of his back as they passed through security. There was a thrill to it, enhanced by the surprise he caught in certain eyes. Respectable, polite little bot like him, coming into work with Onslaught’s own personal trouble shooter. It felt good. 

The envy he caught in some expressions, that felt good too, although it felt a little mean, and he tried not to dwell on it. He took a locker for his weapon, and hoped fervently that he and Vortex would have the elevator to themselves on the way up, for one last lingering kiss. 

It wasn’t to be, and Euphic got off at his floor in a cloud of mixed feelings. So much unsaid! So much he needed to say! And yet, so much felt, so much experienced. He couldn’t stop smiling, and he didn’t care if everybody knew why.


	3. Chapter 3

“I don’t need to ask what you were up to after work last night,” Cachet said. She’d been in a meeting most of the day, and her energy field was torpid when she slouched past Euphic to slump into her chair. “Did you even talk to Kalend?”

“I did,” Euphic confirmed. “I took her advice. Thank you, by the way. How was your meeting?”

“Ugh, don’t even ask. Long, boring. Nothing got decided, as usual, and the aircon kept glitching.” Her antennae bobbed. “Don’t change the subject. If you took her advice, how come people keep buzzing me asking why you were seen coming into the building with Tex this morning?”

“Well, it shouldn’t be _that_ much of a mystery to them,” Euphic said, ducking his head to hide his embarrassed grin. 

“All right then,” Cachet replied, her voice pitched so it wouldn’t carry. “If you’re gonna disregard my advice, the least you can do is give me some quality intel.”

Euphic’s optics widened. “You want me to kiss and tell!” He ducked again as someone passed close to his desk, a smirk on their face. “I’m not that kind of bot!”

“Oh, but Vortex is,” Cachet said, leaning around her monitor so Euphic could see her happy, beaming face. “OK, I’m not gonna get anything done like this. Let’s take an early lunch, we need to talk.”

*

Euphic had hoped to hunt down Vortex at lunch, but how could he say no to Cachet? They grabbed some coolant and a packet of gels from the dispensers in the Finance staff room, and Cachet snuck them onto the sales floor, where she pulled a favour and got them a couple of chairs at an empty desk in the corner, surrounded by sound-proofing screens. 

“I usually take lunch here,” she said. “I can catch some recharge, read a book. It’s quiet.” She settled, crossing her shapely legs and flexing her toes.   
Euphic settled a little less comfortably. There was a kink in his interface cable, and it had taken until now for it to make itself apparent. He couldn’t exactly unclip his hip and fiddle around in there to smooth it out. So he sat, and he sipped his coolant, and he tried to hide the scuffs on his chest with the angle of his arms. 

“Oh Euphic,” Cachet sighed. “You’ve been here an orn, and already you’re the hub of all gossip.”

“Not on purpose!” Euphic protested, and relaxed as she fondly rolled her optics. “I did go see Kalend, and she sent me to see someone else, and… It was good advice. I can only thank you for that.”

“But you won’t take my advice about Vortex?” she said. She glanced around, taking in the bustle of the sales room, the gleam of polished paintjobs sailing past. “We thought he was angling for that logistics contractor, the shuttle with the purple optics.”

“You… thought? How? What gave you that impression?” 

“Oh, not much,” Cachet said. “Just a couple of vorns experience. Vortex doesn’t have fixed tastes. Sure, he likes a hot little racer, all innocent blushes and shiny paintwork, but he likes the big bots too. You know he’s involved with Onslaught?”  
Euphic’s jaw dropped. 

“Well he is. Has been for aeons, since the two of them served together on some planet somewhere, back in the Imperial Wars.” 

“Oh,” Euphic said weakly. 

Cachet patted his arm. “It’s OK,” she said. “He’s also screwing Caltrap down in Repairs, and Sigma Venn from Medical, and I’m pretty damn sure he’s been caught using his office to swap cables with one of the tanks from Security. And that’s in the last two quartex.”

Euphic’s head was spinning. “Where, um, is his office?” 

“He won’t be there,” Cachet said. “And you don’t want to go asking him about this. He screws around, constantly. It’s his thing. I told you, don’t expect anything from him.”

“But he… but we-”

“But it was amazing? But he knew just how to press your every button?” Cachet shook her head. “Experience,” she said. “He’s been around your frametype more than once.”

Euphic carefully sipped his coolant. While he appreciated Cachet’s candour, he didn’t much like the sinking feeling it inspired. “That… isn’t a bad thing?” he said. “Experience is good.”

“Oh, you precious little diode.” Cachet sighed. “You know the best case scenario?”

Euphic shook his head. “We had fun!” he said, forcing himself to meet her eye. “We.. we have fun together. It’s good. Isn’t _that_ the best case scenario?”

“Is that what you want?” Cachet said gently. “Is fun all you’re looking for?”

That sinking feeling was back, but Euphic quashed it with the memory of the way Vortex had looked at him, the way he’d smiled. “It’s a start,” he said. 

“But that’s all it can be.” Cachet set down her empty cube and transformed her thumb into a pair of scissors to get into the packet of gels. “Best case scenario is he doesn’t get bored with you, not right away. He gets enough out of you to keep coming back. Not often, but when there’s no newer option, no giant hulking war-build to distract him. And it’ll be on his terms, and he’ll be as charming as ever each and every time, but when you call he won’t answer, when you need him, he won’t be there. You can’t rely on him.”

Euphic struggled for words, eventually managing, weakly, “That… seems a harsh assessment.” 

“Map it against what you learn,” Cachet said. “You’re clearly not going to take my word for it.” When Euphic’s face fell, she put a hand on his arm. “I don’t mean that badly,” she said. “He’s hooked you, you’re falling hard. I’ve seen it before.” Her optics flickered, and she made a subtle gesture to the left. “See the greenish yellow guy with the big purple optics? Shortish, massive grin on his face?”

Euphic nodded. “I… I can, but I can’t find him in the staff directory.”

“He’s not staff, he’s… a special case. He rents office space here, the sales crew love him. Anyway, he fell hard, just like you. Vortex kept him dangling for orns, and he loved it. And then something happened. I don’t know what, and from what I could tell they never even got to swap cables, but whatever it was it soured things, but it didn’t put him off. He’s still chasing.”

“He’s shiny,” Euphic sighed, tearing his optics from the vision in high gloss polish. Shiny and exuberant, and the centre of attention. But Vortex had monopolised Euphic, had taken him to bars, introduced him to his friends, spent joor after joor tending to his every physical need. 

Cachet waved her fingers in front of his face. “You with me?” she said, half smiling. “We should be getting back.” She put the pack of gels in his hand and wrapped his fingers around them. “This conversation didn’t happen, OK?”

He nodded, at first tentatively, then with surety. His lips were sealed. He put a gel in his mouth, and followed her back to Finance. 

*

It was a lot to think about. Euphic hadn’t expected monogamy, it wasn’t the norm. But he’d hoped, and the crushing of that hope was a significant dampener on his spirits. He sighed his way through the afternoon’s spreadsheets, and forced himself to think cheerful thoughts as he made his mandatory upbeat edits to every message he sent. 

He shouldn’t hope for monogamy. He knew it wasn’t realistic. Sure, some people made it work, but they were special cases. His neighbours back in Kalis, the engineers who’d brought him online, the Comms Director at his last job. 

There were others, too, but those were shorter term, and involved people he knew to have had multiple partners at one time or another. His own relationships had been monogamous, but brief, and although he’d enjoyed them greatly at the time, and been utterly bereft at the ending of each and every one, none of them had been as fulfilling, as exciting, as life affirming as the brief time he had already shared with Vortex. 

It had to be a sign. Not a cosmic sign, Euphic wasn’t credulous enough to believe in those, but a sign from within that there was something right here. It was good between them, considerate, loving. He had a fleeting vision of a blade making an arc in the night, of dripping claws rending through metal. Vortex was dangerous, but didn’t that make his behaviour towards Euphic that much more meaningful?

His fingers busy on the keyboard, he divided his focus and made an internal connection to the building’s intranet. The map of HQ opened readily enough, and although he wasn’t looking for it, he noticed that the entire floor the armoury was located on was labelled Research and Development, and the layout of the walls there was not the same as he had experienced the evening before.

OnsCorp had its secrets, clearly. Euphic smiled to have been let in on one of them, and searched for Vortex’s office. He’d expected it to be on the top floor, or at least on the floor below Onslaught’s spacious glass house. But there it was, a small, unassuming room on the fifteenth floor. He was lodged alongside the comms team, next to one of the many security posts. 

Venting slowly, Euphic queried the system whether Vortex was there. 

He was not. 

Euphic bit his lip and sighed. He made another query. Vortex wasn’t in the building at all, or the system wasn’t allowed to say that he was. Euphic wondered where he could have gone. Maybe he’d been called off to give a statement about the attack. He thought about sending a message, but realised with a jolt that although they’d swapped cables, they hadn’t swapped private comm numbers. 

Luckily, Vortex’s work number was listed in the directory, and Euphic spent the next half joor alternating between doing actual work and trying to work out what to say. 

Then his private comm pinged, and his spirits soared, until he realised it was just an automatic reminder that his pistol insurance was about to run out. 

“Don’t work too hard,” Cachet said, patting him on the shoulder on her way out. “See you tomorrow!”

He nodded, at a loss for what to say. He hadn’t noticed the time. He’d been too busy running internal risk assessments on each of his potential messages. 

If only there was a way to say ‘Hi, I really enjoyed last night, could we please do something similar again very soon?’ without looking desperate. Or needy. Or easy. 

But where Vortex was concerned, he was all of those, and damn but it made his sensor set sing. 

He vented deep, and began to close down his workstation. He renewed the one day insurance - expensive, but it’d get him home where he could give proper consideration to his longer term options - and got as far as shutting down his on-screen mail client when a message came through marked 

‘Urgent!’. He clicked it, bracing himself for whatever was to come. And then his grin returned full force. 

It was from Vortex. It read, 'Bored. Stuck in a meeting. You free later? I’ll be at the Cog from 20:30:15.' Euphic beamed, and forwarded the message to his personal mail client, pulling it up on his HUD before responding. 

'See you there,' he sent. 'Heading out now, hope you don’t have to stay too long.'

And there, Vortex now had his personal line. And they were going out later, and Euphic had exactly enough time to get himself to Fast Finish for a full detailing. They might even be able to touch up his paint. 

With a skip in his step and a smile on his face, he closed his workstation and made his way out of the office. 

*

It had been raining. Acid puddles dotted the sidewalk, and passing grounder alts threw up a constant biting spray. Euphic bounded along, a bit ungainly from his plastic foot covers. A little acid rain wouldn’t hurt, Fast Finish was just around the corner. They didn’t take appointments, it was first come first served, but he could sit in the queue and give quiet consideration to the different weapons insurance policies. 

“Hey.” The voice was gruff, and at first Euphic didn’t realise it was aimed at him. “Hey, red, got your head in the clouds?”

Euphic shook himself. It was Rusty, lurching along the sidewalk. The mech gave him a nod. 

“I owe you an apology,” he said. “I shouldn’t’a taken off like I did yesterday. Not when you were so good as to buy me all that stuff.”

“Don’t worry about it,” Euphic said. “How, um… How are you doing?” He regretted it instantly. Rusty was not doing well, that was clear. Asking him couldn’t have been anything but cruel. But Rusty tilted his head, and shrugged. 

“Can’t complain,” he said. He itched the back of his audial, flakes falling. 

“Can I get you something to drink?” Euphic said. “I… I’ve got a spare pair of foot protectors too, if you want them.”

“You keep ‘em,” Rusty said. “Them boot things won’t do me no good. Wouldn’t say no to a spot of fuel though.”  
Euphic smiled, ignoring the looks of disgust from several passers-by. “I think I saw a kiosk on the corner, I’ll be back.” It was a relief to be away from him. Much as Euphic wanted to help, he knew a cube of mid grade and some energon chews wasn’t what Rusty really needed. He didn’t know what Rusty needed. A new frame, new nanites, a job, somewhere to live. None of which were within Euphic’s means to provide. He patched himself into the public data net and ran a few searches, looking for local charities that performed the sort of work that might do more than fill a fuel tank. 

By the time he got back, he had a bag with two cubes of mid grade, a six pack of coolant, and some soft gums. He passed them over, careful not to come into contact with Rusty’s pitted hands, and bit his lip. “There’s a volunteer group over in Xura district,” he said, noting the caution in Rusty’s eyes, the way he paused with his hands around the bag. “They get funding for new parts,” he pressed on, “for… for people who need them. I just found them on the data net, I could see if they could help with a whole frame… if you like?” 

Rusty’s expression softened. “Ain’t nothing they can do to help me,” he said. “Anyway, don’t want some dead bot’s frame. That’s what they do. Dead parts, dead frames.” He watched Euphic’s optics widen, his own gleaming for a brief moment before subsiding to their usual dull glow. “You’re trying,” he said, “I get that.”

“What else can I do?” Euphic said, feeling helpless. 

Rusty laughed, and went to turn. “Let me show you something.”

Euphic looked up, towards the distant gleam of Fast Finish. “I… How long will it take? I’ve got an appointment.”

“Oh, not long,” Rusty said. “You’re meeting your rotary, aren’t you?”

Euphic couldn’t help the smile. “Yeah, later,” he said. “I… have something else to do first.”

“You’re getting cleaned up.” Rusty sniffed. “I saw which way you were looking. But you don’t wanna say ‘cause it’s like rubbing my nose in what I can’t have, right?”

“I don’t want to make you feel bad,” Euphic muttered. 

“I remember what it’s like,” Rusty sighed, limping his way to the crossing, and hitting the button. “Getting a nice long massage, the full works. Wash, dry, polish, them little brushes on the insides of your wheel rims.” He shook his leg, sneering at the car who’d spattered him as they passed. The crossing beeped, and he loped ahead. “What do you do up at the big place anyway?”

“Payroll,” Euphic replied. 

“Ah, so you’re not in weapons dev or anything like that?” 

Euphic frowned. “No, just the Finance team. Um… What you said yesterday, about OnsCorp…”

“Don’t you pay no mind to that,” Rusty said. “Don’t know where my mind’s gonna wander one day to the next.”  
Euphic wasn’t sure about that, but didn’t want to challenge him. At least they hadn’t turned down any dark foreboding alleys. They seemed to be heading down the open roads, away from the shops, into the wider streets and stretches of waste ground between Kaon Central and the overpass holding the freeway to Polyhex. 

It was only his connection to the data net that told Euphic where they were. These weren’t streets he recognised. They were dirtier, wetter, layers of trash clinging to the sidewalk, windows broken where they weren’t covered over. There were some businesses here - a cheap high grade shop, a mechanic’s about to shut up for the night, an interface parlour with its flashing orange lights - but they were built like miniature fortresses, with bars on the windows and cameras covering the doors. 

“What did you want to show me?” Euphic said, aware the time was ticking by. He needed to get in that queue, there was no telling how many people would have got there before him. 

“This way,” Rusty called, and Euphic wasn’t sure how he’d got so far ahead. He had a loping gait, wide and inconsistent, but effective. Euphic hurried to catch up, knowing it was unwise, wondering if he should comm someone, just in case. 

In case of what, he had no idea. A mugging, an ambush. But no, there they were, a group of mecha in the shadow of one of the vast high pillars supporting the overpass. Not hiding, not doing anything but watching him and Rusty approach. They had a canopy rigged above them, tarps suspended from hooks driven into the pillar. A perimeter had been marked around their makeshift home with a row of metal barrels ripped apart and laid jagged edge up. It was a low and vicious fence, a last, desperate barrier against the world. 

They weren’t a threat. They couldn’t be. Every optic was dim, every surface blooming with rust. Euphic called up the charity’s page, found the location of the shelter, the details of the helpers. Rusty came to a halt, and handed the bag over the fence, to a figure swathed in filthy canvas. 

Maybe they _were_ a threat after all. A crushing blow to his sense of equilibrium and security. They were war-builds, all of them. Rusty didn’t look like one, not until he stood next to them, until Euphic realised the nubs on his arms and legs once held tires, the stumps on his shoulders should have been pylons. He ran a quick search for charities who focused on relief for veterans; how could Cybertron treat them like this?

“Who’s that?” the mound of canvas asked. Her voice crackled, but it was sharp, her optics narrowed. 

“The grounder I met,” Rusty said. “The one who fed us yesterday.”

“Oh.” She looked through the bag. “No med-grade?”

“I can get some!” Euphic said, taking a halting step closer. “I… I didn’t know there were more of you. I’m not exactly rich, but I can buy you some medical grade.”

“Rather have high grade,” a low voice rumbled. It belonged to a tank, or what used to be a tank. They leaned against the pillar, in the shade of the overhanging tarp. 

“Not rich,” Canvas said. “Gritshaft, get this into Billa.” She pulled a can of coolant from the bag, and tossed it into the shadows. 

An unseen figure caught it; Euphic heard the clunk of impact, the slide of the ring-pull. He winced at the rasp of a throat opening, the grind of metal plates dry of oil. 

“Here,” he said, digging into a compartment on his leg. He stepped forward, holding a travel can of joint lubricant over the jagged perimeter wall. “There’s about half left, you need it more than me.”

“Billa needs a vat of the stuff,” Canvas said, but she took it, her fingertips dark, uneven. Euphic realised she’d painted over the rust. 

“Red here thinks we can go see the charity folks over at Xura,” Rusty said, in the manner of someone poking open an old wound. Euphic wished he’d never mentioned it, but he also wished he’d bought more than two cans of mid grade. Two cans wouldn’t get them anywhere. 

“Xura,” Canvas sniffed. “Xura’s no good,” she said. “They sign you up to a work programme, call it training. No pay, no high grade. Can’t even frag less you tell ‘em. I’ve been to Xura.” She spat, and kicked the ground. 

“What about The Veterans’ Friends?” Euphic asked, then hurriedly added. “I’m not suggesting you go, I just want to know. Do they not help?”

“If you were infantry,” the tank growled. “If you didn’t have to sell your medals. If you can remember your number. If you got a clean record and an honourable discharge. If you’re _respectable_.” He sneered the word, and Euphic frowned. 

“That’s the spirit,” Canvas said. “They all come with strings. They wanna hang you up like a puppet, and dangle you in front of the Department of Health, the Cybertronian Charity Commission, the Senate. Whoever’s paying their way. The only help worth a damn around here’s the free clinic, and they got no space, and no money.”

“We’ve got our dignity,” Rusty said. “We’re beholden to no-one, and we look after our own.”

“That we do,” Canvas said, her tone subdued, her gaze falling to her feet. 

“But you don’t have enough!” Euphic said, feeling sad and angry and impotent all at once. “What can I do to help?”

Canvas shrugged, and Rusty pulled a sad smile. “Sorry lad,” he said, “you already have.”

Euphic heard the footsteps too late, saw the bag only as it went over his head. He hit his comms, but a jolt of energy caught him right in the side and he didn’t have time to dial before the darkness overwhelmed him.


End file.
